Film Reviews by Alphaville

With Thunder Road and now this, Jim Cummings is carving out quite a name for himself as a writer/director/star. And unlike many a writer/director/star, he does not indulge in vanity projects. This is a proper film that re-invigorates the tired old werewolf formula. Sure, people are torn apart at full moon, but this is more of a murder mystery set amidst the Rocky Mountains of Utah. It also has a nice line in sardonic humour as Jim (a local police officer) is beset by a whole world of problems both personal and professional. He flatly refuses to accept the existence of a mythical werewolf, unlike his deputy, but then “he thought Men in Black was a documentary”.

At a taut 81mins there’s not a frame wasted, right up to the satisfying resolution of the mystery. And if, amidst the action and the humour, you can’t quite put your finger on the supporting subtext that tackles nothing less than the human condition, watch the short DVD Xtra. It will add to your admiration of what is a small but unexpected gem.

The scatter-gun approach to film: an arbitrarily edited jumble of disjointed scenes shot by waving a camera around. Add a charisma-free leading man and exploitative female nudity to reel in the saddos and you have a film that is virtually unwatchable.

After a boring opening full of talking-heads in close-up it’s downhill all the way. Where to start? The script’s awful, the acting am-dram and the direction abysmal. To make it even worse, it’s filmed with a shaky-cam in claustrophobic interiors. The plot concerns an alien on a spaceship (yawn, yawn). To avoid the need for any special effects, it takes over humans and turns them into zombie-like crazies. There’s not an iota of imagination in the whole thing. Feel very sorry for Bruce Willis that his career has come to this.

Benson and Moorhead’s best film yet, with the added bonus that they’re not acting in it as well as writing and directing it, but it still has all the faults of their previous work. For half the film we’re subjected to disjointed scenes of two paramedics (Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan) dealing with the effects of the drug of the title. Then a sci-fi element kicks in and things become more interesting as Mackie himself explores the drug’s effect. Dornan, meanwhile, is wasted in a thankless part as his moaning mate.

It’s all nonsense, of course, and becomes increasingly so. To give away the silly sci-fi premise would be a spoiler (NB Avoid spoiler-heavy Cinema Paradiso review before viewing), but at least the film’s second half becomes more engaging and less wearing to watch than the first half. At the end, there’s even some emotional engagement with the characters, which is unusual in Benson/Moorhead films. A thrilling score, featured heavily in the excellent trailer, only serves to expose the film’s ridiculous premise more.

You know how bad films seem even more disappointing when they have a wonderful subject matter to work from? Well here’s a prime example. In films such as A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) Jean Seberg was a muse to the filmmakers of the 1960s French New Wave. So what does this bio do — concentrate solely on the few years when the FBI’s men-in-suits investigated her for her involvement in the Black Panther movement in the US. It’s a dull tale. Did the filmmakers learn nothing from the films of Godard, Truffaut and other greats who showed how imaginative and exhilarating cinema can be?

Staidly directed family drama about a young mother with post-natal depression… or is it more than that? A kind of mystery thriller that’s never really believable, it’s competent enough if you like slow-burn Sunday night TV fare. More likely, you may find you don’t give a toss.

Slow-burn drama about… wait for it… an auditor looking into a bank’s books. The title refers to cryptocurrency shenanigans around which the plot develops. Subtitles may help you follow all the tech-talk and acronyms. It’s pitched as a thriller but, despite a pounding electronic score, never develops much thrust. It even begins at a climactic stand-off to prompt interest before flashing back to the beginning – always a sign of a film unsure of maintaining interest.

Despite this, it’s an engaging, well-mounted piece with a couple of appealing leads in our autistic leading man and his tech-guy mate, and it has surprising heart.

A Korean pulp gangster movie that’s such an over-edited mish-mash of jump-cut images (slo-mo, stills, silhouette etc.) that it alienates from the first frame. The director was apparently trying to make a film about “movement” rather than story or character, so he must shoulder all the blame. No doubt it’s meant to be edgy and cool, but it just comes across as amateur and tiresome.

Don’t be fooled by the title. This is no sci-fi actioner. It's more like an Enid Blyton story called Four Go Wild in the Woods. The plot? Four teenage astronauts land on an alien planet and go walkabout in the woods with occasional gory moments. Apart from the lack of plot or pace, static direction, pointless dialogue and one-note “acting” make it seem like a shoestring-budget amateur production totally lacking in imagination. Even at a meagre 75mins, it fails on all counts.

An old-fashioned WW2 submarine film, ruined by being dubbed into English for morons, which destroys all sense of realism and involvement. The Belgian trailer shows what it might have been, but the original language Belgian version is not available on the DVD.

After an impressive above-ground (and wordless) action opening, there’s little here anyway but a Boys Own adventure with heroic resistance fighters and dastardly Germans. The main plot involves transporting uranium in a stolen Nazi U-boat and the claustrophobic underwater scenes are a clichéd bore you’ve seen a hundred times before. It might be better in the original language version, but probably not much.

What begins as a touching character study, about an ailing veteran living in a motorhome and hunting in the woods of a wintry Maine, develops into a suspenseful thriller when he finds himself hunted by a gang of criminals. An aged Tom Berenger, in his best film for a long time, anchors the piece as a thoroughly believable character you’ll root for. He even has trouble bending to pick up his rifle.

On the down side, the film lacks high points, Tom’s behaviour sometimes seems contrived for the sake of the plot, and it will disappoint anyone looking for in-your-face action. Otherwise, set in an austere environment so well captured you can almost feel the chill, this is a seductive 90min watch.

Beautifully realised French drama about a young man and his 7yo niece. The main plot point is a shocker that affects their lives. To say more would be a spoiler, even though many reviewers seem to want to spoil the viewing experience by giving the game away (why do they do that?). Even the trailer, for once, is safe to watch.

The film is intriguingly plotted, beautifully acted and directed, makes Paris look wonderful and takes you on an emotional ride. Only the French make films like this, when even a bicycle ride through the city, evoking memories of La Nouvelle Vague, is a joy to watch.

Family drama turns thriller after a startling plot point at the end of Act 1. Our hero’s life changes irrevocably and we’re suddenly in a different film with different characters. Probably better to ditch that first half-hour and treat it as back story, but that’s not the main problem. There’s no action and the low-key atmosphere never makes our man’s predicament at all thrilling.

What we’re left with is a more of an escapist movie than a thriller. No thrills, no excitement, just a meandering drama abut a man trying to escape his troubles, with only a few scenes that temporarily up interest. Based on a book with the same feeble title, the French title The Man Who Wanted to Live His Life is much nearer the mark.

If you don’t want to watch the film, the trailer will tell you the whole story in a much shorter time.

An Indonesian superhero film promises something different from the bog-standard Hollywood superhero fare, but it’s a real disappointment. We follow our hero from boyhood to manhood, until a lightning strike makes him superhuman. Unfortunately all that means is that he becomes good at martial arts. Cue clichéd fights with bands of baddies who come at him one at a time. You know the drill. Boring, boring.

Apart from a few pointlessly bloody scenes, this grossly overrated film is mostly a glacially slow mood piece that takes real determination to get through. Andrea Riseborough’s mind is transferred into Christopher Abbott’s body to make him murder someone… which means that as soon as we’re getting to know one character, she goes off screen in favour of another, destroying any empathy and interest built up (admittedly minimal in the first place). A montage of flashing images is used from time to time to indicate her troubled mind. It’s something to do with a corporate takeover (yawn, yawn).

With a more proficient director at the helm the premise might still work. But over-deliberate camerawork, subdued acting, one-paced exposition and a score so soporific it could be marketed as a sleep inducer make it difficult to keep off the Fast Forward button.

Sci-fi films should at least be stimulating, for goodness sake. For an exhilarating film in a similar vein, take Upgrade, for instance.